About Ghost Ships

There is no area on land which can compare to the desolation and loneliness of the high seas. This desolation, combined with the stories of sailors from centuries past, has created maritime legends of great monsters, of horrible sights which mean doom for any vessels unlucky enough to behold them, of places where ships vanish with no trace, and of mythical ghost ships… ragged sailing vessels and rusting hulks manned by the dead.

Even without such legends, the sea is a dangerous place. Storms, mutinies, disease, and piracy have caused the deaths of countless sea travelers over the years, and such events can easily wipe out the entire population of a ship. With these dangers, not only have the seas been home to mythical ghost ships, but there have been many cases over the years of real ghost ships – vessels which continue to journey the oceans with dogged determination, even when everyone aboard is missing or dead.

This series will cover all of the famous ghost ships throughout history, both mythical and real. This weeks article will focus on one of the most famous seagoing tales of all – the story of The Flying Dutchman.

What is The Flying Dutchman?

The Flying Dutchman legend is one of a spectral ship whose hauntings center around the Cape of Good Hope, just off the Southern tip of Africa. The vessel has sometimes appeared as an insubstantial ghost which glows with a red light, and at other times as an archaic yet somewhat solid large sailing ship. There have been dozens of reported Flying Dutchman sightings over the last 350 years.

‘The Flying Dutchman’ is not the name of the ship. It is used sometimes as the nickname for the Captain of the ghostly vessel, and is also used as a reference to the legend itself. In most such tales, the ship in question is nameless. Most Flying Dutchman viewers are in no position to worry about the ship’s name anyway, as a sighting of this vessel is considered to be a sign of disaster to come, and many such encounters are followed shortly thereafter by either the death of one of the observers or the sinking of the observing ship.

There have also been accounts of the Flying Dutchman’s ship, in a more solid state, hailing passing boats. If communicated with, the dead ship will send over a party of pale, exhausted looking crew members who will hand over letters and request that the ‘living’ ship ensure that these letters are delivered back to The Netherlands. If this mail is investigated, it will be seen that the letters are addressed to long dead loved ones and refer to events and technologies from the mid 1600’s. Acceptance of the mail will always result in certain doom for the ship which takes them on board, as such correspondence is destined never to reach land.

Origins

Before the construction of the Suez Canal, there was no other option for ships heading between Asia and Europe other than to sail around the African continent and brave The Cape of Good Hope. The Cape has always been an area of notoriously rough seas and violent storms, as well as a big psychological milestone for sailors, as it signifies the point where the vessel could stop heading South (or West, for ships coming from Asia) and begin heading East (or North). The inherent danger of the sea in this area, combined with the emotional significance attached to it, makes the Cape a logical center of strange stories and hauntings.

There is also a similar myth from Germany which talks of a man named Falkenburg, who is doomed forever to sail his craft around the North Sea as he continually plays dice with the Devil in an effort to win back his soul. Captain Falkenburg sails a ship from the Middle Ages, and his story predates the Flying Dutchman by at least 200 years. As such, his tale may have been the basis for the Flying Dutchman legend.

Regardless, there are three differing legends which relate to this particular vessel and how she began her eternal journey.

The first and most popular story is that a man named Hendrick Van der Decken (Hendrick ‘of the Decks’ in English) was the Captain of a ship which became caught up in a terrible storm while attempting to round the Cape. The crew and passengers pleaded with him to turn around and seek a safe harbor, but the Captain, a notoriously stubborn and belligerent man, refused with a barrage of curses.

Eventually, some of the crew attempted to seize the ship by force in an effort to save themselves from destruction, but the Captain shot the leader of the mutineers and threw him overboard. However, as soon as the body of the dead crewman struck the water, a dark, ghostly figure suddenly materialized on the deck, causing everyone but Hendrick to draw back in surprise and fear.

After a few seconds of silence, the figure spoke to the unimpressed Captain.

“You’re a very stubborn man.”

The Captain swore at the shadow and replied, “I never asked for a peaceful passage. I never asked for anything. So clear off before I shoot you, too!”

The ghostly figure did not leave but stood motionless, watching the Captain mutely.

In response, Hendrick raised his pistol and fired at the shadow in a fit of rage, but the gun exploded in his hand. As the Captain blustered and swore, the shadow addressed him once again:

“As a result of your actions you are condemned to sail the oceans for eternity with a ghostly crew of dead men, bringing death to all who sight your spectral ship, and to never make port or know a moment’s peace. Furthermore, gall shall be your drink, and red hot iron your meat.”

“Amen to that!”, cried Hendrick of the Decks, just as defiant and unrepentant as ever. And with that, the Flying Dutchman resumed his fight against the sea and the elements, and continues that fight until this day.

Another story is that The Flying Dutchman is the ghost of Captain Barend Fokke, an excellent sailor who was famous for making extremely fast trips between Holland and Java, Indonesia in the late 1600’s. The speed with which he would sail between these two points was so uncanny, so much faster than anyone else, that he was reputed even in life to have help from the Devil.

Because of this pact with Satan, the story maintains that Captain Fokke is compelled to continue sailing his trade route between Europe and Asia, even after death. He journeys in a ghostly ship called the Libera Nos (Latin for ‘Free Us’) with a crew of skeletons, moving at breakneck speed with the aid of hellish winds.

The third story maintains that the vessel is the apparition of a Dutch warship which sank during a storm with the loss of all hands. Several days after the sinking, a vessel which had earlier traveled with the doomed ship ran into a storm which happened to be at the same latitude as the tragedy. Lookouts reported another ship heading directly towards them at full sail, and with horror, the crew recognized that the ship was the same one which had sunk the previous week. There was no eluding the fast moving pursuer, and the ghostly vessel drew closer until the storm subsided, upon which it vanished into thin air. According to this version of events, the account represents the first sighting of the Flying Dutchman, and it is this lost warship and dead crew which continue to haunt the Cape.

Flying Dutchman Sightings

It is easy to dismiss anything pertaining to the Flying Dutchman as legend and myth, but there have been many sightings of this apparition over the years, and a great deal of them are from very reliable sources. The encounters themselves nearly always happen at night, during stormy weather, and a few of the most well documented tales are as follows:

In 1823, the log of the HMS Leven, as written by Captain W F W Owen, records 2 separate sightings of a ghostly ship made during the same night near the Cape of Good Hope. No attempt at contact was made during the first encounter, and the apparition sailed out of sight. However, later that evening, the ghost ship reappeared closer than ever and began to lower a lifeboat – presumably to send some of her crew over to the Leven. It was never truly known what their intentions were, as Captain Owen wisely decided to avoid any interaction and his ship sailed off as quickly as possible.

On the night of July 11th, 1881, the most well known of the Flying Dutchman occurrences took place when she was spotted by 13 separate watchmen and duty officers aboard the HMS Bacchante, the HMS Tourmaline, and the HMS Cleopatra. One of the witnesses was none other than the future King George V of England, who at that time was a prince serving aboard the Bacchante as a Midshipman. His diary of that night sums up the event in the following fashion:

“At 4 a.m. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up. The lookout man on the forecastle reported her as close to the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her… Thirteen persons altogether saw her. The Tourmaline and Cleopatra, who were sailing on our starboard bow, flashed to ask whether we had seen the strange red light… At 10.45 A.M. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the foretopmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle and was smashed to atoms.”

There were also a number of sightings during World War II. In 1939, 60 people who happened to be near the South African coast saw a large sailing ship making directly for land at great speed. It looked certain that the ship would beach herself, but she disappeared right before the collision would have occurred. Also, Admiral Doenitz, Commander-in-Chief of the German navy, noted that several sightings of the Flying Dutchman were reported by U-boats sailing near the Cape at various times during the war.

And on August 3rd, 1942, another famous incident took place which involved the HMS Jubilee. The night watch, led a man named Davies, noticed a sailing ship in the distance at about 9 pm. It was a schooner of a class that he had never seen before, and had a ghostly, indistinct appearance. Signals from the Jubilee were ignored, and as the seamen continued to watch the apparition, they noticed she was moving with full sail and unnaturally quickly, despite the fact that there was no wind whatsoever that night. After a few minutes, the ghostly sailing ship abruptly vanished, and her appearance was recorded in the Jubilee’s log.

The final sighting of the Flying Dutchman occurred in 1959, when a Dutch freighter called the Straat Magelhaen reported an extremely close encounter with a ghostly sailing ship. Her sails were full, she was moving extremely quickly, and she was so close that the crew of the freighter could clearly see a lone man steering the craft. Collision seemed inevitable, but the apparition vanished right before impact.

There are no major documented sightings of The Flying Dutchman after 1959. The reasons differ, but it could be merely because traffic around the Cape of Good Hope is much lower now than in past centuries, with most ships preferring to sail the much shorter route into the Mediterranean Ocean and through the Suez Canal in order to navigate between Asia and Europe.

Legend vs. Myth

The most commonly accepted explanation for Flying Dutchman sightings is the Fata Morgana, or superior mirage. It is a similar phenomenon to the one a person might see in a desert or on a hot city street, where an illusion of water can sometimes appear. Superior mirages, which are the type suspected of creating Flying Dutchmen, tend to occur in colder areas or in places where there are large differences in temperature between layers of air.

Such mirages have been known to show projected images of landscapes/ships beyond the horizon, and causing them to appear as if they were floating in mid air. They can make a ship/landscape appear upside down. They can also distort the appearance of real, visible objects in ways that make those objects seem to be unnatural and disturbing. They can even cause false sunsets – in these cases, the sun will seem to set, then reappear, then set again. Given the bizarre visual effects that can be generated with a superior mirage, it becomes quite easy to write off most Flying Dutchman encounters.

However, the typical recorded sighting of the Flying Dutchman does not come from an idle tourist or land-lubber. They come from crew members of warships and large merchant vessels, men with years of experience at sea who have sailed all over the world. They come from lighthouse keepers, whose credibility and ability to recognize objects in the ocean have always been crucial to preventing maritime disasters. Some of those logs, especially those written in World War 2, would have been submitted to superior officers who would hardly have been in the mood for joking around. Even if objects were projected/distorted by mirage effects, how many large sailing ships were still at sea in 1942 during the Jubilee sighting, and in 1959 during the Straat Magelhaen encounter, when both observations were at a reasonable distance and crew members clearly identified the unknown craft as a sailing ship?

Perhaps there is no ghostly sailing ship which still plies her trade on the unforgiving seas near the Cape of Good Hope. Perhaps there never was such a vessel. However, those who sail that area of the world at night should keep close watch on the dark horizon for a tell tale red glow, a sailing ship which travels at unnatural speed, and pale faced sailors, eternally hoping to mail their letters about a time long past to people long dead.